- Impact
About Us
Precision Development (PxD)
Precision Development (PxD) is a global nonprofit organization that acts as a bridge between smallholder farmers and the innovations they need.
We design, test, iterate and scale services that enable farming households to manage risks and increase their incomes. We also advise governments on digital agriculture strategy.
Our primary innovation has been providing high-impact digital agricultural information to smallholder farmers via mobile phones. Evidence from randomized evaluations shows that PxD’s services improve farmers’ production, profits, and climate resilience and are extremely scalable and cost-effective to deliver to millions of farmers. For instance, a recent study of our flagship service in India estimates that in the long run, every $1 invested in the service will generate agricultural profits of $9 – $15.
- Our Approach
The Opportunity
Roughly 570 million smallholder farmers, owning less than 2 acres of land, produce 30% of the world’s food. However, farmers in low—and middle-income countries (LMICs) typically harvest just 25-45% of their land potential (FAO). Climate change amplifies these challenges, bringing unpredictable weather patterns and shifting growing seasons that disrupt crop yields and livelihoods. These fluctuations jeopardize food security, farmer livelihoods, and the well-being of farming communities. Smallholder farming households are home to 80% of the world’s poor, and improving their livelihoods is one of the most promising solutions to global poverty (FAO).
While numerous cost-effective agricultural innovations exist to help farmers, these solutions don’t often reach the right people at the right time. Private markets often lack incentives to scale these innovations, and LMIC governments often lack the capacity or resources to deliver them. For instance, only 6-21% of farmers in India have access to in-person government agricultural extension (Cole and Sharma, 2017; Cole et al., 2024).
PxD’s Role
PxD acts as a bridge between smallholder farmers and the innovations they need. We design, test, iterate and scale services that enable farming households to manage risks and increase their incomes. Our flagship innovation delivers high-impact, actionable digital agricultural information directly to smallholder farmers via their mobile phones.
In 2024, PxD’s services reached over 18 million farmers across Asia and Africa.
Key elements of our approach
Farmer First
We are focused on reaching the poorest farmers and designing services that meet their needs where they are. By applying human-centred design and behavioural science, we deeply understand our users, identify constraints, gather rapid feedback, and create, iterate, and scale services that maximize impact for farmers.
Scale and Value for Money
Our focus is on developing innovative services with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people while maintaining very low marginal costs for additional users. The benefits of these services far outweigh the costs of scaling them.
Solution-Agnostic
We prioritize understanding the right solution for each context rather than pushing a one-size-fits-all approach or promoting a single product or platform. Our goal is to foster a diverse ecosystem of services—developed by PxD and others—that are accessible at scale rather than exclusively promoting our own solutions.
Evidence-Led
We use evidence from social and agricultural sciences to identify promising innovations and inform service design. Through rigorous experimentation, we evaluate our services, scale those that work, and refine or discontinue those that don’t. We openly share our findings with the global research, implementation, and policy communities.
Continuous Improvement
We continuously learn from our services’ vast engagement and adoption data alongside advanced technologies like remote sensing. We collaborate with partners and external experts to incorporate cutting-edge science (artificial intelligence, machine learning ) that enables efficient learning and adaptation over time.
Sustainable
We scale through partnerships with governments, nonprofits, and the private sector, which keeps user acquisition costs low and ensures that services remain free for farmers. We integrate these services into local systems, gradually transferring the necessary skills, capacity, and systems to government partners to ensure long-term sustainability.
Vision
Sustainable livelihoods for everyone, everywhere.
Mission
To scale innovations that millions of farmers can use to improve their lives.
Our Organization
PxD was founded in 2016 by a team of visionary development economists and experts dedicated to harnessing innovation for global impact. Our founders include Nobel laureate Michael Kremer, Shawn Cole, Dan Björkegren, and Heiner Baumann.
To gain further insight into PxD’s inspiration and approach, we recommend Michael Kremer’s Nobel Prize lecture, Experimentation, Innovation, and Economics, delivered in December 2019.
Meet Paddy
Paddy is PxD’s innovative platform for automated, two-way communication across channels like Voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Purpose-built for large-scale interaction, Paddy enables seamless data collection, personalized messaging, and cross-channel integration – empowering meaningful engagement at scale. to enhance user engagement.
Join a growing and diverse team!
At PxD, we are powered by a dynamic and diverse team working globally.
Together, we take pride in driving meaningful impact worldwide. Joining PxD means becoming part of a collaborative, impact-driven community committed to innovation and positive change on a global scale.Make an Impact Today
Support our mission to empower farmers and scale sustainable innovations. We estimate that for every $1 invested in PxD’s services, we generate additional agricultural profits of $9 - $15. Your contribution can create lasting change for smallholder farmers worldwide.
